“We were rolling in hot on the objective. All of a sudden the driver swerved hard to avoid an obstacle or something. I was thrown from the back of the SUV and landed on my M4. I hit the deck so hard I was afraid I might have bent the barrel. By the time I rolled up off the road and got back on my feet the rest of my teammates were taking up their positions. The house we were supposed to hit was less than a 100 yards off. We started taking fire from the house as we hit it.”

The previous incident was from a conversation I had with a friend, a former Special Forces solider who had been over in the big sandbox during the previous year. As all students of the gun do, we were sharing our “been there, done that” stories.